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SHAKESPEARE could not have written a more sinister play than the one being performed on the British stage these days. Michael Gove’s betrayal of Boris Johnson in the Conservative Party leadership struggle was truly Machiavellian in its ruthlessness. I suppose Johnson must now know how Julius Caesar felt when he saw his friend Brutus about to strike him with his assassin’s dagger. In Shakespeare’s immortal play Julius Caesar, the Roman emperor’s last words were: “Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!” Indeed, Boris Johnson’s father invoked these very lines when he learned of Gove’s perfidious move of announcing his own leadership bid after he had assured Johnson of his support just an hour earlier. Ironically, Johnson is currently writing a biography of the Bard.
This political drama has gripped the country, and diverted attention from the fratricidal struggle the Labour party is currently engaged in. But the ongoing turmoil, added to the confusion caused by the result of the Brexit referendum, is the worst political crisis in Britain since the Second World War. Gove’s display of naked ambition is matched only by Boris Johnson’s own burning desire to take up residence in 10 Downing Street. Out of the five declared candidates for Tory leadership, Gove and Home Secretary Theresa May are the frontrunners. The latter has more support within the Conservative parliamentary party. This is important because Tory MPs will reduce the number of candidates to two in a series of votes to knock out the ones with the smallest number of ballots. The leader — and thus the prime minister — will then be elected by the 150,000 members of the party on Sept 9. And while David Cameron will continue as the PM till then, he is a caretaker who will not be providing the leadership the country needs at this critical time.
What is specially ironic is that Gove and Johnson have been friends for 30 years, and the former was the brains behind the Brexit campaign while the latter added his charisma. The deal, until the dramatic last-minute stab in the back, was for Johnson to stand for leader with Gove set to become his Chancellor of the Exchequer, widely seen as the second most powerful job in Britain. But when Gove declared his own leadership bid, Johnson recognised that he did not have enough support among Tory MPs. So when he announced he was pulling out of the race, his supporters were shocked, with many joining Gove. But May remains the odds-on favourite among bookies. Although she backed the Remain campaign in the recent referendum, she maintained a low profile. Also, Gove has been discredited within his own party by his act of treachery. May is widely seen as a serious, experienced politician who has served as home secretary for seven years.
If Gove has been reviled, Boris Johnson’s political career is in ruins. After successfully leading the Brexit campaign, he went off the radar for three days following the result when massive confusion and dismay prevailed across the country. And now, having forced Britain out of the European Union and David Cameron out of office, he has withdrawn from the leadership race. This confirms the widely held view of an ambitious but irresponsible politician who is willing to endanger the whole post-war system to further his own career.
The irony is that both Cameron and Johnson are the products of Eton and Oxford where they were both members of the Bullingdon Club, an informal group of hard-drinking, slightly dissolute young men. Johnson has long coveted Cameron’s job, and many accuse him of riding the Brexit bandwagon with the intention of weakening his rival enough to succeed him. It is not clear that his intention was to actually win the referendum. In the event, it is obvious that he had no clue about how to handle the fallout from his Pyrrhic victory. Indeed, a number of Brexit supporters are pulling back from some of the promises and claims they had made, thus adding to the confusion about what will happen next.
Just when the opposition Labour Party needed unity and strong leadership to take advantage of the power struggle among the Conservatives, Jeremy Corbyn is engaged in a destructive struggle for survival with his own parliamentary group. Here, the vast majority want their leader — elected just last year — to resign, ostensibly for his lacklustre role in the Brexit campaign. But in reality, many of them have opposed his election and his leadership ever since nearly 60 per cent of the party membership voted for him. Corbyn has attracted a new breed of left-wing young members to the party in the same way as Bernie Sanders has in the United States. The reason Labour MPs have not yet triggered a fresh election by putting up a rival candidate is they realise that this would probably result in a Corbyn victory, given his popularity with the new Labour members. Nevertheless, it is clear that the maverick leader is losing support because many realise he is the wrong man to lead the party in case of fresh elections being called in the wake of Brexit.
Apart from the fate of individual leaders, there is the real danger of the entire political system being discredited. People are watching in bewilderment and anger as politicians settle scores and push their ambitions while the country remains in limbo. Anxiety over the impact of leaving the EU is high, and all conversations are dominated by this topic. One theory doing the rounds is the possibility of parliament overruling the referendum. This has been raised because Britain entered the EU as the result of an act of parliament in 1975. And now, some experts argue, it will take another act to annul the previous one. Or perhaps this is wishful thinking on part of those horrified at the prospect of leaving the EU.
Published in Dawn, July 4th, 2016
